The present invention relates to the general field of irrigation and lawn care systems, and in particular, to automated irrigation and chemical treatment systems.
Irrigation systems for residential and commercial applications, known in the art, often include a centralized control switch that triggers watering during specified time frames. Some systems lack the ability to gauge whether the subject field is already saturated before irrigation begins. Thus, these systems fail to conserve water and often times over saturate the subject field and foster unfavorable and sometime harmful conditions, such as disease or molding. Other systems lack the ability to gauge whether the subject field has been adequately saturated after distributing water. Often times, these systems fail to provide the subject field with enough water, leaving the field to dry out and eventually die. What is needed is an irrigation system that automatically allocates water, only if necessary, after assessing current soil conditions.
There are still other systems known in the art which use a computerized irrigation system to collect data from different zones of a field. These systems collect data, such as wind speed, temperature and humidity and analyze the data to deliver a customized amount of water to each zone. Similar systems known in the art disclose a sprinkler control system that generally monitors soil saturation rates by utilizing an extensive database of evapotranspiration rates of different cities. These systems unnecessarily employ a large database and assume evapotranspiration rates will remain relatively constant year to year. These systems further fail to recognize geological deviations in the land itself, including failing to recognize that some parts of the land may be more conducive to drainage than are others. Furthermore, the current systems require costly deployment mapping in order to locate and replace buried sensors. What is needed is a system that economically and efficiently integrates a plurality of sensors into an irrigation system and accounts for differences in topography and other environmental conditions.
Automated irrigation systems which include a basic chemical distribution system are also known in the art. These systems typically include computer controlled liquid fertilizer injections or pumps that add fertilizer into the water supply. Thus, these systems often end up fertilizing the entire land regardless of whether a necessity exists. What is needed is an easily programmable, automated irrigation and chemical treatment system that allocates customized amounts of water and chemicals as required.
Underground irrigation systems known in the art are operable to deploy water to large zones with a multiplicity of sprinkler heads. These sprinkler heads, which have no internal control mechanisms, act merely as flow through devices. Thus, known sprinkler heads fail to accommodate topographical gradients, existing environmental conditions and other factors within a controlling zone. What is needed is a non-mechanized, internal control mechanism that is energy efficient and controls and monitors the flow of water and chemicals through a given sprinkler head.
Accordingly, there is a need for a low cost, efficient and easy to program automated irrigation and chemical treatment system that accommodates sprinkler head level data acquisition and provides customized water and chemical delivery to individually zoned areas of a land region. There is a further need for an efficient system that strategically captures and utilizes energy from the flow of liquid and the inherent water pressure subsisting within the system. Moreover, there is a still further need to harness this energy and store it in an energy source, such as a rechargeable battery, to foster a self sustained, energy conserving system.